Bitcoin Dev Peter Todd: Forced Soft Forks Send a “Dangerous Message”
In a recent blog post, Peter Todd, one of the more active bitcoin developers, raised the prospects of an amicable end to the so-called “civil war”. Setting out a condition, Todd states: “If major industry players were willing to commit to layer 2 solutions, I’d be willing to support something like a forced soft fork, and I’d be willing to support a coin voting hard fork even if they didn’t.” A forced-soft-fork is similar to an ordinary soft fork, but unupgraded clients won’t be able to spend their funds until they upgrade. However, in an email response, Todd states:....
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Bitcoin Core, an “open source software project that is a direct descendant of the original Bitcoin implementation”, released a statement late last week on its website. The main focus was how Bitcoin consensus rules were changed, which is typically through soft forks and hard forks. Hard forks and soft forks do virtually the same thing, so Bitcoin Core argues that soft forks are to be preferred as they do not cause the amount of harm on the Bitcoin network as a hard fork can potentially do since users can choose to upgrade to new features when they want to, or remain or the current Bitcoin....
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has summarized the implications of soft and hard forks amid growing tensions surrounding Bitcoin’s future. “...There is an essential difference between hard forks and soft forks: hard forks are opt-in, whereas soft forks allow users no “opting” at all,” he wrote earlier this week. The Bitcoin price was under downward pressure Friday as the community awaits Chinese regulatory announcements and indecisiveness over SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited continues. After Unlimited succumbed to a bug earlier in the week, rhetoric between the opposing sides became even....
Since the beginning of the development of Segregated Witness, an increasing number of alternative Bitcoin hard fork supporters have criticized the implementation process of soft forks on Bitcoin Core, claiming that Core developers have a complete monopoly over the process. Former Bitcoin Core developer Jeff Garzik and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin particularly stated that proposed soft forks have to undergo a majority consensus among Bitcoin Core developers that ultimately decide whether a soft fork becomes implemented into the BItcoin network. “Soft forks very specifically, from an....
Developer Peter Todd has caused quite a stir in the community by committing a double spend on Coinbase. Taking $10 from the company and buying Jeremy Gardner of the Augur project some reddit gold. Todd admitted to the action via Twitter and GitHub with the crack he created. At this time, Gardner says he and Todd were conversing, and Todd had decided to “make a point about security in the industry” Gardner goes on to say that he had succeeded on his first try and was able also to snap a screenshot of the action. Many people in the community went crazy on Twitter following this announcement.....
As opposing sides in Bitcoin's long-lasting scaling dispute seem to be inching closer, one of the remaining sources of contention is not whether, but how to achieve a small block size bump. TheBitcoin Core development team wants to increase the maximum block capacity through a Segregated Witness soft fork, which has since been embraced by a large part of Bitcoin’s development community and a significant segment of the Bitcoin industry. Others, like CEO of major payment processor BitPay Stephen Pair, believe the perceived benefits of soft forks over hard forks are being overstated. Speaking....